The rise of arbitrary code on the client-side which can talk to the server however it sees fit has meant an increase in client-side complexity. Good architecture on the client has gone from an afterthought to essential - you can’t just hack together some jQuery code and expect it to scale as your application grows. Most likely, you would end up with a nightmarish tangle of UI callbacks entwined with business logic, destined to be discarded by the poor soul who inherits your code.

Thankfully, there are a growing number of JavaScript libraries that can help improve the structure and maintainability of your code, making it easier to build ambitious interfaces without a great deal of effort. Backbone.js has quickly become one of the most popular open-source solutions to these issues and in this book we will take you through an in-depth walkthrough of it.